


Let The World Go On Without Me

by myhomeistheshire



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Military, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, But mostly angst, F/M, tiny bit of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 15:05:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3451595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myhomeistheshire/pseuds/myhomeistheshire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jake enlists in the military, and Cassandra is diagnosed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "No Hurry" by Zac Brown Band. And again...really sorry about the angst. If it makes it any better, I almost cried while I was writing this. (I never cry when I'm actually writing things, so this was a pretty intense 'almost'.)

When she hears the words _brain tumor_ , her world begins to shut down.

This can’t be happening. This isn’t happening. She has her entire life ahead of her. She still wants to have kids, travel, win the fields medal. She has _so much_ left to do.

So she just decides: she won’t let it kill her. She won’t let herself die.

 

As she’s settling onto the couch that night (she can’t go to bed, can’t sleep - because if she sleeps she can’t guarantee where her mind will go), she starts to think about Jake.

 

She thinks about the day she met him, in that stupid rundown bar when she’d stopped for gas in a small town and ended up staying for three years. The first time he’d flashed that dizzying smile at her, the first time he’d rolled his eyes at her and she’d realized he wasn’t actually annoyed. The first time he’d said _I love you._

 

Her mind starts to spin out, into deeper memories.

 

_“I love you so much.” She can’t even see through the tears, but she doesn’t need to - she’d memorized his face years ago._

_“I know, love. I’ll be back in a couple months, okay?”_

_“God_ dammit _, Jake, don’t talk to me like I’m a child. You might not be back in a couple of months, you might not be back_ ever _-”_

_“I had to enlist, Cassie! You know I had to -”_

_“No, you just did it because you wanted to run away, like you always do -”_

_“Cassie. Cassandra, darlin’. I love you. I love you. I love you.”_

_She can’t stop the crying, but she can press her face into his shoulder to muffle it a little._

_“I love you.”_

_She shouts it, when he’s just at the gates to the plane. He turns back, and offers her that same smile she saw the very first time she’d ever seen him. She offers a weak smile back, and she focuses on numbers._

 

She glances down at the ring on her finger. Twists it, takes it off, slips it back on. How’s she going to tell him?

 

_“C’mon, Cassie, a little further.”_

_“Can you just tell me what this is about, Jake? You know I hate surprises. Unless it involves a present - wait, is there a present?”_

_Jake laughs. “You’ll see. But I promise, you’ll like it.”_

_Cassandra isn’t exactly an outdoorsy person, and all this climbing through brush is more trekking than she ever wanted to do in her life. But Jake’s here, and she trusts him. So she follows._

_It’s starting to get darker when the trees clear out._

_“Finally.” Cassandra breathes - and then the breath catches in her throat._

_They’re standing on a small clearing verging on a cliff that’s looking out over the ocean. The sun is setting, its last rays sprinkling out over the shimmering waters._

_Cassandra’s mouth is stuck halfway open, her unable to move a single muscle._

_Jake chuckles. “Never thought I’d see the day when you’d be speechless, darlin’.”_

_She doesn’t bother to reply to that - just alternates between gazing at him and the horizon in equal fascination. She’s so lost in the latter that she doesn’t even notice for a moment that Jake’s gotten down on one knee._

_When she does, her hands fly up to her face. “Jake -”_

_“Cassandra.” He opens a small wooden box to reveal a beautiful white-gold ring inset with tiny diamonds. “Cassandra Cillian, light of my life, girl of my dreams, will you -”_

_“Yes.” She blurts out before he’s even finished, then bites her lip as Jake gently slips the ring onto her finger._

_The ring is strange and new, but when he kisses her she fits into his embrace just like she always has._ I love you, _she thinks she’ll write in her vows,_ because you always feel like home.

 

She remembers in vivid detail their wedding day, just three months before Jake enlisted. A year ago next Monday. God, what an anniversary present. _Hey, honey, I’m dying._

She buries her head in her hands.

  


When his next letter comes in the mail, she doesn’t read it.

She sets it on the counter, on the bookshelf, perched on the edge of the table - always moving it restlessly. She can’t open it, because when she opens it she’ll hear his voice and she’ll break down and she’ll tell him and _she can’t tell him._ She’s firm on this. He’ll be back in two months, maybe three, and she’ll tell him then. For now, he doesn’t need to know. He doesn’t need another thing distracting him when he’s facing death every day.

 

_Hey Cassie,_

 

She closes the letter. She can do this. Slowly. One painstaking line at a time. She reads the opening line again, takes a deep breath, reads the rest of the letter.

 

_I know the first thing you’ll want to know is how things are going out here, the real version, so here it is: it sucks. Two guys I knew have already been blown to bits, and another one lost his leg and bled out before they could get a chopper in. I’m still in one piece though, don’t worry, and I plan on staying that way. The squad is already sick of you, I talk about you so much - I still keep that picture of our wedding day with me all the time. Have I mentioned yet that I love you? Well, I love you. Just two more months, hey? And honey, I expect a full length letter on everything back home. Is Donna still cheating at her bridge game every week? Do the kids at school still love you? Of course they do, what am I saying. You got voted Teacher of the Year, what, three years in a row? They’re all going to go onto the Ivy Leagues, and it’ll all be because of you. How’s that new math problem coming? I know it seems impossible, but sweetheart, you eat impossible for breakfast. I love you._

_Jake_

It’s short. Too short. And yet by the end the ink is already seeping from her tears dripping onto it. She wipes them away, letting out an angry moan. What is she supposed to do? How is she supposed to _tell_ him?

  


_Dear Jake,_

 

She isn’t able to get any further. She focuses on the pen, but her hand won’t move. _Dear Jake, I have a brain tumor. Dear Jake, you married a time bomb. Dear Jake, I’ve been having these headaches that I keep thinking will kill me but they don’t, not yet, and I’m a terrible person because every once in a while I wish they would._

 

 

She can’t focus on anything anymore. She keeps showing up to her lessons without a plan, and ends up spouting gibberish that she’s fairly certain none of her students can even slightly comprehend. The craziest things keep running through her mind - things like _maybe I could just run away and never come back,_ and _what would happen if I just never told Jake, ever?_

 

She even considers sending him a _Dear John_ letter once, but she dismisses the idea immediately. It would kill her, so much faster than the tumor, and she isn’t selfless enough to do it.

 

Instead, she focuses on not sleeping. It’s harder than you’d think, but she manages to drink enough caffeine to stay up late and get up early and she sometimes worries if this combined with her complete loss of appetite is healthy, but then she remembers, _hey, I have a brain tumor_. Besides, with sleeping comes dreaming and with dreaming comes Jake, and she can’t think about him or else she’s going to break.

 

 

Then one day, after a particularly vicious doctor’s appointment, she grabs the pen and starts writing.

 

_Dear Jake,_

_I miss you. I miss you so much every day, I can’t stand it. And the headaches are getting worse. It feels like someone is lighting TNT in my brain, and last week old Donna called the ambulance because I passed out when I was helping her play bridge. Did you know I can smell, and taste, and see colors all at once now? It’s overwhelming. But you - you still smell like pine trees. Now you just taste a little like whiskey, too._

 

She starts writing letters, every night when she’s trying desperately not to sleep. She’ll never send them, she _could_ never, but it helps to get it out on paper. She can imagine him reading them, at least.

 

_Dear Jake,_

_It’s almost like I don’t have to eat anymore. Sunsets taste like strawberries. Lampposts taste like walnuts (minus the allergic reaction). Multiples of four taste like those root beer flavored candy sticks you always buy in the old candy stores I always make us stop in. Oh, and you’ll love this one - country music tastes like old cigarettes. I still love it, though. It reminds me of you._

_Dear Jake,_

_Everything hurts. Everything hurts all of the time, and I can’t tell anyone, and I’m scared. I’m scared because I don’t want to die and I know it’s going to hurt more and I’m scared of that. And I’m scared for you - because every day that I face death here, you’re facing death over there._

_Dear Jake,_

_I love you. I love you. I love you. And I miss you. But mostly I love you._

 

 

When she gets a definitive date that Jake’s coming home, she laughs until she cries, and then she sobs so hard she can’t stand. It’s three weeks away, and she doesn’t know how she’ll be able to hide it any more. She goes to the doctor for the pain medication she’s been refusing, and she stuffs it in a nameless bag in the back of the medicine cabinet. She’ll tell him, she _will,_ but just - not yet.

 

When he steps off the airplane, Cassandra can’t wait for the crowd to disperse. She runs through, crashing into hard bodies but not caring. And then she’s in his arms, and she’s crying into his shoulder, and he’s kissing her neck, and they’re both saying incoherent things that sound vaguely like _I love you_ and _I missed you._ (None of it sounds like _I have a brain tumor._ She should say it - but not right now. Right now, she just wants to hold him.)

 

That night, they crack open a bottle of red wine that’s been sitting in the cupboard since she’d bought it on the night he’d left. She’s snuggled into his side on the couch, and as she’s leaning back to rest her head on his chest she thinks _this is pretty close to perfect._

“So, sweetheart. How has your year been?”

_Oh, you know - solved a few math equations, got diagnosed with a brain tumor._

“Well, it’s definitely better now.”

She can feel his smile even when she isn’t looking at him. “Yeah?”

“Mmm, definitely. I mean, August really is the best month, isn’t it?”

“Every month is the best month when you’re here.” He kisses the top of her head, and this time her smile isn’t even forced.

 

Later that night, she wakes up at 3 am. Jake is sound asleep beside her, and she rolls over to drink in the image of him, _here,_ before slipping out of bed and walking towards the kitchen. The headache that woke her up started bad and is getting worse, so she takes one of the painkillers and settles onto the couch to watch some old _Leverage_ reruns. Of course, the one she randomly selects is the episode about a kid in need of a heart transplant. Her breathing is a little shallower through the episode, and not just from the headache.

When it finishes, she doesn’t bother to go back to the menu, just lets it run through the credits. She wishes that her life could be like that - that someone could swoop in and whisk away all of her problems. Then, maybe, she could just enjoy Jake being home for the short two weeks, instead of spending her time warding off headaches and fighting to remain conscious, and ignoring the gnawing guilt of not telling him.

 

 

As it turns out, two weeks is a short amount of time. Before she even realizes it, Jake is kissing her goodbye, and she’s watching him walk away.

“Wait!” She calls out, and he turns around to look at her. _Jake, come back. Jake, I need to tell you something. Jake, I’m sick._ “I love you!” She finishes, heart in her throat, and he mouths the words back at her before turning to leave.

  


Time stretches out. Days turn into weeks turn into months, and as it goes on everything gets worse. The doctor gave her a time limit now - three months. She has three months left to live, and Jake won’t be back for four.

 

 

She calls her parents, for the first time in six years. There’s a lot of crying, and she promises to call again. She doesn’t tell them, either. She’s spent so long not telling people, it feels impossible to change that.

 

 

This time, when she sits down with a pen and some old stationary, it’s to write a letter he’ll actually read - not for a while, though. Not for another three months.

 

_Dear Jake,_

_You’re going to be mad at me. And I know as you’re reading that you’re going to be thinking ‘I won’t’, but trust me, you will._

_I’m sick. I’ve been sick since right after you left, and I could’ve told you so many times but I didn’t. See? You’re mad._

_I have a brain tumor. It’s inoperable. I found out twenty-six days after you shipped out._

_I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I love you. I’m sorry I couldn’t say this in person, but I love you, and no matter what happens now, I’ll love you after it._

_I want you to be happy. And I know this is the ultimate shitty thing to say, when I’m the reason you won’t be for a while, but I do. I want you to fall in love again. I want you to have kids, because you always wanted them and I didn’t, not until I was 30. It seems stupid now, but I’m glad we didn’t. Kids should grow up with two parents, not one and a shadow._

_Remember that time when we had our first fight, and you ran out, and I was so mad I wouldn’t let you back in for a week, so instead you slept out in Mrs. Mckee’s apple orchard? I’m kind of a big fan of that memory (the making up part, at least). So could you bury me under those few apple trees that snuck over into the graveyard by the church? I know Reverend Meyers is stingy about how he arranges everything, but I think you can persuade him. No one can ever resist you. I definitely couldn’t._

_I love you. I love you. I’m sorry._

_Cassandra_

  


When it happens, she’s at school. She’s in front of her class, teaching her class about sinusoidal functions, when the headache of all headaches explodes inside her skull.

She falls to the ground, and she can hear students around her. _Mrs. Stone, are you okay? Help! Somebody call an ambulance!_

She can tell when the paramedics bring her into the ambulance, because she’s suddenly surrounded by the smell of cloves. Apparently, her brain can recognize the hospital setting even when her eyes can’t.

It hurts. It hurts like fireworks getting set off in her head, like somebody laced her nervous system with C-4. She’s thought she was gone a couple of times before, but this is it, she knows, and she should be thinking some deep existential thoughts but all she can string together is _ow_ and _shit_ and _someone please make it stop please please please._

 

She sees a light. She closes her eyes.

  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake's POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I didn't intend on continuing this, but then...shit happened. So here's Jake's POV.

 

The day Jake opens the letter is the worst day of his life.

 

_Dear Jake,_

 

Her writing is wobbly, like she was shaking as she wrote this. He forces himself to move past the first line.

 

No. _No._ This ain’t - this isn’t real. Because Cassie - _his_ Cassie - has to be alive. If something happened to her - the entire world would stop spinning. It would.

He sees the second page, attached with different handwriting, and with trembling hands he pulls out that one.

 

_Jake,_

_I’m so sorry. Cassandra didn’t tell me what would happen, I swear, or I would’ve sent this to you sooner. She just said there would come a time when I’d need to send you that letter, and that I’d know when it came. Well, now I know._

_She passed away 6 days ago. They tried everything they could, but she was gone before the ambulance reached the hospital._

_Again, I’m so, so sorry._

_Ezekiel_

 

His shaking has grown worse through the reading of the letter. No. This has to be some sort of elaborate fucking prank, because otherwise -

Otherwise Cassandra is gone.

 

He lets out a cry, and he kicks his pack across the floor. When people start filtering into his tent to see what’s wrong, he’s bent over, head in his hands.

 

He can’t speak to tell them what’s wrong, but Colonel Baird can somehow tell. She orders everyone out. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything now.

 

“Stone.” Baird says, and her stern voice now sounds compassionate. “I know what it’s like to lose someone -”

“So do I.” Jake growls. “Out in the battlefield. But not - not like this.” His voice breaks. “She was never supposed to die.”

 

She waits for a couple moments, before ducking out of the tent and leaving him to the reality that just became a nightmare.

  


They manage to get a chopper in to fly him back for the funeral. It still feels unreal - he keeps expecting her to show up behind him and whisper _hey, what’s the long face about?_ And every second that she doesn’t, it hurts a little more.

 

The first night he stay at home is awful. He can feel her, everywhere, and it suffocates him. He sleeps on the couch, and that way it’s a little easier.

 

At the funeral, it’s a dizzying blur of readings - Cassandra wasn’t even christian, who the hell organized this? - and speeches. Jake had written his obituary on the plane home, with four shots of whiskey to get him through it, but when he goes up to speak nothing comes out. So he clasps his hands, and he sits back down.

 

They bury her under the apple trees, like she wanted, and the sight of her casket being lowered into the ground is enough to send Jake straight to the liquor cabinet when he gets home. Maybe this way he won’t have to be surrounded by remembering.

  


 

He’s almost finished his tour, but the next day he enlists in another one. God knows he can’t stay here, and at this point a battlefield is the only way he’ll be able to forget about her even for a moment.

 

So he ships out, again, and he tries to ignore the ache in his chest when he looks back and remembers she isn’t there waving goodbye.

 

It’s nine months of lying in the dirt for hours, of watching his friends get riddled with bullet holes right beside him, of sleeping for only 90 minutes a night to avoid the dreams. Every morning he feels a little closer to death, and hell, maybe that’s what he wants. Maybe if he dies, he’ll be able to see her again, and god knows this world isn’t worth living in without her.

 

“Stone.” His jaw is aching from where Evans had just punched him in the jaw, although he wouldn’t deny the fact that he’d deserved it. He glances up to see Baird staring him down, and he groans. “My tent. Now.”

He follows her into her tent, where she whirls around and fixes him with a piercing glare. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She asks tersely.

“Dunno what you’re talking about.” He replies, and she snorts.

“Don’t give me that bullshit, Stone. For the past nine months you’ve been trying your best to get yourself killed, and I’m frankly astonished you haven’t managed it yet. Do you _want_ to die? Do you think this is what she would want?”

“Don’t you dare talk about her.” Jake’s voice is suddenly furious. “Don’t you _dare.”_

“She wouldn’t.” Baird doesn’t back down. “She wouldn’t, and I don’t. So get your act together, or I’m sending you home.”

 

And that’s the worst threat of all - going home. But his tour’s almost over, and now he’s faced with the choice of enlisting again, or finally facing going back and accepting that she isn’t there.

 

Two months passes. His tour ends, and he finds himself arriving home without a clue of whether he’s staying or leaving again. But in the meantime, he’s gotta find something to do.

 

He can’t bring himself to enlist again quite yet, so instead he gets a job working with cars at the old mechanic shop by their place. _His_  place, he corrects himself, and ignores the way his throat closes up when he does.

 

The house is too empty, all the time, so he avoids it when he can. He takes overtime shifts, or hangs out at the bar when he can’t do that. He’s been studiously ignoring the growing list of voice mails on his phone, and as long as he isn’t home he doesn’t have to deal with people ambushing him there. He doesn’t want to talk about it. Doesn’t want to talk about _her._ Because if he does, he’s pretty sure he’s going to break.

 

“Jake.”

He’d gotten home late, late enough that no one should be waiting on his steps, but here Ezekiel is.

“It’s late, Zeke. Go home.”

“C’mon, man. I haven’t talked to you since the funeral.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Too busy to talk to me? Lamia? Donna? Jake, you’re avoiding everyone. And god knows I’m not the greatest one to preach healthy behaviour - but it’s gotta be killing you. You need to try and go back to normal.”

 _“Normal?”_ Jake’s voice cracks through the air. “She’s dead, Ezekiel. She’s _dead,_ and nobody even thought to fucking _tell_ me.”

“Nobody else knew! She was good at keeping it a secret, so nobody noticed -”

“I should have.”

Zeke gives him a pitying look. “You couldn’t have, mate. You were only home two weeks.”

“Yes, but something was off even then. I thought she was just tired, but now -” His hands are formed into fists. “I should’ve noticed. She should’ve _told_ me.”

“Yeah.” Zeke sighs. “Yeah, she should’ve.”

 

When he leaves, Jake doesn’t know what to do with himself. He shouldn’t be _angry_ at her, goddammit, she’s _dead,_ but he can’t help it.

“You should’ve told me, Cassie.” He says aloud to the empty house. “I could’ve come home, I could’ve helped. And now I don’t even know what it was like for you - you were completely alone. Christ, Cassie. I’m so sorry you were alone.”

 

He sets about cleaning, because tomorrow’s his day off so it doesn’t matter how late he stays up, and it’s been far too long since he touched anything in this house without worrying that it would break. He sweeps floors, wipes down counters, re-arranges furniture. Not too much, though. He still needs to remember her, in some ways.

He’s wiping down her favorite chair, when something spills out from between the seams of the fabric. Sheets of paper, folded and stuffed away. He frowns, and leans down to grab them.

As soon as his eyes land on the first line, he knows what they are.

 

_Dear Jake,_

_I miss you. I miss you so much every day, I can’t stand it. And the headaches are getting worse. It feels like someone is lighting TNT in my brain, and last week old Donna called the ambulance because I passed out when I was helping her play bridge. Did you know I can smell, and taste, and see colors all at once now? It’s overwhelming. But you - you still smell like pine trees. Now you just taste a little like whiskey, too._

 

His legs give out from under him, and he collapses into the chair numbly. He flips through them quickly - there’s so many. She obviously hadn’t intended him to see them, but now - well, now things have switched around a little bit.

He settles in and starts reading.

 

_Dear Jake,_

_I had another appointment with Dr. Clemings today. She says that even though it’s inoperable, we could try chemo. Except that it’s going to be painful, and the most it could give me is an extra month. So I don’t think I’m going to do it. I’m sorry._

 

_Dear Jake,_

_Everything is strange. Not just the synesthesia, but everything. I went to school yesterday, and Thomas came up afterwards to thank me for being such a good teacher. I just about started crying while he was there, and after he left I was blubbering for 15 minutes. You notice a lot more things when you’re dying, I guess. Your perception changes._

_Dear Jake,_

_I miss you. I miss being able to talk to you, I miss you being able to make me laugh. I really need to laugh right about now. It’s getting harder to think about what’s going to happen - but I have to. It’s only two months away, and god, I know it’s selfish but I really wish I’d told you. Because then you’d be here, and everything would be a little bit easier to handle._

 

On and on and on. He reads through the night, until he finishes the stack and looks up to see the sun rising. He wipes away his tears with the back of his hand, and he gets out of the chair.

 

He’s not ready to do anything, after that. He wants to cry, to hit something, and more than anything to have Cassandra here to hold him. But it’s finally starting to register that she’s really gone - that he’s never going to kiss her, or smell her perfume, or hear her laughter.

  
He’s starting to realize that he might be able to live through it.


End file.
